To Asian Americans, the horror of the Pacific War is best symbolized by a single episode, the "Rape of Nanking (Nanjing)" in 1937, when some 300,000 Chinese men, women and children in the then capital city of China were indiscriminately tortured, raped, and slaughtered in a six-week orgy unleashed by the advancing Japanese Imperial Army. Thus Asian Americans who founded an organization dedicated to bringing about appropriate and timely redress from the Japanese Government called it the "Rape of Nanking" Redress Coalition (RNRC). Co-chaired by the Hon. Judge Lillian K. Sing and Dr. Clifford Uyeda, the RNRC is an inclusive, non-profit, tax-exempt community-based organization.

The primary purpose of the international conference is to document and educate the international community of the need for the Japanese government to end its fifty years of denial of what happened during the war and to accept its full responsibilities to the victims and victimized.